


Daemon AU Meme - Midnight on the Demon Patrol

by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)



Series: Daemon AUs [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2017-12-22 12:47:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/913397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For my Daemon AU meme; scenes and snippets from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/625941">Midnight on the Demon Patrol</a> 'verse with added daemons.</p><p>-Karkat, Dave, and Dave's daemon, feeding Karkat (NSFW)<br/>-Rose and Kankri, on daemon meanings and siblinghood.<br/>-How was Bowie affected when Latula. blocked Dave's mind in the coffee shop?<br/>-Rose, Dave, Karkat, Kankri post chapter 27.<br/>-Rose, Terezi and Vriska.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Midnight on the Demon Patrol](https://archiveofourown.org/works/625941) by [Asuka Kureru (Askerian)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru). 



> Daemons:  
> Rose: Astarte -- black cobra (Female)  
> Dave: Bowie -- white raven. (Female)
> 
> This won't make any sense if you haven't read the original fic.

By the end of the first week they already have a routine; Dave will be sitting on the couch, or in bed, and Karkat will come up behind him and lean against his back, chin heavy on his shoulder, and Dave's heartbeat will speed up.

Karkat doesn't like to ask out loud. Sometimes he grumps that he's hungry, like an accusation; sometimes he doesn't speak at all, just watches Dave with speculative wild beast eyes, how best shall I devour the flesh off your bones, O talking meat.

Dave is an obliging guy, so he's not very hard to convince to put a hand down the front of his pants and grab a handful of his stirring dick.

Often Bowie caws out a mocking laugh, or starts grooming to pretend boredom. (Karkat has no daemon to groom while Dave caresses his armored arm and tightens the hold of his gauntleted hands around his ribs.) Tonight she just stares back at Karkat, perched on the back of the couch. Karkat's teeth are nibbling thoughtfully at his neck and despite how that makes him breathe faster, the wet-warmth and the idle threat, Dave knows his demon isn't paying attention to him, is staring up through his wild mess of bangs at the bird that is the other half of Dave's soul.

Karkat's teeth barely dent his skin, he doesn't even want to play with the risk of drawing blood without orders and besides Dave's been losing too much of it recently. He licks a tentative stripe up Dave's neck, and Dave groans, not all from sexy. "Gross, too much saliva."

Karkat teaching himself how to play him like a violin, though, _that's_ sexy.

Karkat bumps his cheekbone into Dave's jaw, a pointed reminder, and Dave obligingly goes back to pumping himself hard. It's a bit weird that Bowie is sitting here staring -- it's not like she's never seen him jerk it but usually she doesn't _watch_.

He thinks maybe she guessed what would be coming next before he figures it out.

Karkat's hold tightens on his waist and he grunts; his wings come up to curl around Dave's shoulders (can't curl farther to surround him, too short, wrong angle, but something corvid inside him can't help but hunker down, push back into it.)

And then he reaches past Dave and _he touches_ _Bowie_.

No one's ever, not since, was it Rose, eleven and gangly, was it Bro, Dave's leg broken and Osprey-Bro unable to pick up Bowie without hurting her worse? He can't remember but it was so long ago, it was _before_ , she wasn't even a bird yet. (Snow-white already though.)

Armored knuckles light on chest feathers, running down her throat -- his throat, Dave can feel it on his skin, _through_ his skin -- down under her, nudging her legs like, like --

She hops up on his fingers and he lifts her, pulls Dave backward until they sprawl in the corner of the couch, Dave stretched out with one leg on the cushions and one underneath the coffee table, stuck in the hollow between Karkat's body and the back of the couch, and Bowie -- Bowie, oh shit, oh fuck, Karkat bringing her to his chest, letting her hop down on his bright hard plastron, resting his heavy demon claws on her back.

She doesn't even flap her wings; she goes, hunkers down in the crook of his neck, and they croon at each other like a crow and a rusted metal cricket-crow a little bit in love.

Dave can't _feel_ him like he would a human touching his daemon, soul to soul, and it's a bright sparkle of unexpected pain. He wants, he wishes Karkat had an animal soul to cradle, he wishes he would ever be allowed to touch it -- hah, that would never happen. At the same time -- at the same time his head is craned and he stares, so close his breath washes back to him as he pants, _someone else's hand on Bowie's back_.

Ivory feathers and hard flat shell, white and gray and artery red, her eye and his flesh underneath.

Karkat's hand is so cautious on her back, claw tips held raised so he won't even brush her, and when she preens one of his bangs he closes both his eyes on that side and makes a little startled pout.

Dave's hand on his own dick is nothing like cautious, it's tight and hard and fast, and when he comes he arches so hard he shoves Karkat into the cushions and makes him grumble against his skin.

Soon it becomes purring, as Dave goes loose all over his demon, as his daemon's wings spread boneless on hard-shelled clavicles, the chiseled curve of a blade-tipped shoulder. Karkat feeds, mouth open wet against his skin, suckling lightly even though there's no blood to be had. His arm is still wrapped tight around Dave's ribs, his other hand still on Bowie's back, like he wants to make sure they don't wander off.

They like that, there's no need to tell each other so, to even look at each other, they both know it.

Soon he's going to shove them both off. For now, he feeds and they bask.

\--

The next day on patrol she perches on Karkat's shoulder instead of Dave's, and when Jade's Sievert tilts his weird pointed thylacine nose at her she fluffs her wings and says she gets a better look at the clues from this level. Dave sticks his hands in his pockets and ambles lazily away from Jade's not-fooled eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

"Is there any significance to your and your twin brother's daemons both being color variants?"

Rose looks up from her laptop; on the couch Kankri sits, gigantic dragon wings folded as close as he can. He has taken out three lamps and a painting already, and it galls him; he's being cautious.

His long, segmented tail flows over the edge of the couch to coil loosely around his feet. Astarte has wound herself through his blades, a sinuous shape of obsidian scales draped over slate chitin as though Kankri's tail were a branch.

Kankri is human-looking enough -- the face, the chest, the arms -- that seeing her daemon touching him always sends a little shock down her spine. She pushes it down, ruthlessly. Extraplanar beings can no more encroach on a daemon and their human's bond than can any mindless animal, or that could the Panserbjorne, sentient as they were, while they still lived.

"Well?" he prompts, one eyebrow arched.

"Only the significance us superstitious humans attach to such things, I suppose."

"Hm. Which superstition would that be?"

She smiles, thin and amused. "Why, that either our daemons mingled in the womb, and we now have half of the right one..."

"Or that one of them stole their sibling's rightful daemon," Astarte continues, lazily winding herself a little higher on Kankri's tail.

It doesn't help that Astarte shares her gender. Bowie's gender opposes Dave's, as is proper. "I believe a hundred years ago I would have been burned as a witch," she muses, and smiles.

"Ah, but the appellation 'witch' would have been somewhat accurate one hundred years ago, wouldn't you say?" Kankri asks, leaning forward in polite interest. "Allowing for the limited state of understanding of extraplanar summoning by humankind as a whole and its following inaccurate terminology."

Astarte flicks her tongue thoughtfully, and coils herself two blade-rungs higher up Kankri's tail, careful to press her weight only on the dull upper side. "I think it would have been _extremely_ accurate, but mostly because they would possibly have considered Bowie's appearance as proof that Dave was tainted as well, and tried to burn him on our pyre."

"I'm afraid I am not following," Kankri admits after a few seconds of staring at the both of them one after the other.

Rose shrugs, returns to her laptop, pointedly. "'Conjurer' would have been the harmless moniker -- amusingly enough, a mostly male-gendered term. 'Witch' implies a certain malevolence."

"I still do not see -- ah."

His Sight tingles down her spine, roots itself to the base of her, and she knows that he knows exactly what she would do -- more accurately, how little she wouldn't -- should anyone attempt to hurt her twin like that.

(He would escape from the pyre, really, if she chooses to keep imagining a logical progression to the scenario, but he would feel so _hurt_.)

Her spine tingles again, but it isn't Kankri's mind-eyes on whatever it is he Sees when he looks through her, it's his hard, clawed hand brushing delicately down Astarte's long back.

When she coils across and between the blood-warmth of his thighs, he smiles a strange, fey smile, and she knows he understands exactly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tanoraqui asked: How was Bowie affected when Latula. blocked Dave's mind in the coffee shop? In general, how do daemons interact with demons riding their human - do they automatically hear everything the demon says to the summoner, or can they have separate conversations?
> 
> (kinda sidestepping the question haha whoops)

"Okay, time for some lighter questions... Favorite sweets?"

"Marshmallows."

"TV show?"

"I like telenovelas, they reach levels of absurd previously believed to be merely rhetorical. _Especially_ when they do manage to explain something about human beings to me."

"What do you think your daemon would be if you had one?"

This question is ridiculous, and it doesn't help that it's the reporter's magpie daemon that asked it. Karkat sips his drink, tries to convey the mismatch of ideas there -- daemons are external souls, _reflexions_ of souls. Karkat _is_ a soul.

Well, right now he's also a body, but it's not like he's up on animal symbolism, it's not really his thing.

"Lava... crab?" he throws at random. The crab is the one animal he's met personally and enjoyed so far. Cats are entitled assholes that remind him too much of Kankri with their nose in the air, dogs are balls of oh-my-god-fuck-off-please, and fish just plain boring. Crabs look like they're ready to lay the smackdown, at least. They're _equipped_. They have their armor on and their weapon at hand. He can respect that.

Crows remind him too much of Dave for some reason that has nothing to do with the fact that his daemon is one, and everything with the way he laughed when the wild ones outside wanted to steal Karkat's stash. On second thought he thinks he has just figured out the reason why Dave's Bowie is a fucking crow in the first place. (Rook. Whatever. Same difference.)

"Lava crab?" the reporter echoes with a laugh. Karkat nods.

"Black one. Matte." Like volcano stone. He's seen one on TV and Jesus did it speak to him--

Bowie lands on his shoulder in a flurry of ivory feathers, yanks on a tuft of his hair. "Karkat oh my fuck Karkat, Latula's doing something, you've got to--"

Karkat reaches up to close a clawed hand around the rook's wings, lifts her off his shoulder, brings her up front. Bowie goes still in his hand, belly up, long scaly legs pressed to her belly.

Standish and Laysia are staring at him, eyes huge and mouths hanging open. "What?" he asks, already sliding off his seat.

"You're _touching_ \--"

"It's not like I can encroach on -- oh _fuck_."

He forgets about them, by his summoner's side in a leap. Latula's aura has swallowed his almost entirely and Karkat hisses, Bowie held to his armored chest, goes up on his haunches to touch Dave's knee, his shoulder, shake him. Dave's face is slack, not even Latula on it, or only in brief flashes. Bowie is trembling; he can feel her even through the armor. He lets her go so he can grab onto Dave with both hands and she flutters up to Karkat's shoulder, hunkers down on the side of his neck, head half-hidden in his hair.

It's not like demons _can_ encroach, Karkat tells himself, but he knows there are some -- mostly Princes -- whose power is to sever.

He goes about talking his fellow Knight into stepping the fuck off Karkat's turf, and tries not to wonder about how wrong whatever Latula is doing must feel, that Bowie is refusing to cuddle up to her own self instead.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> godhoodie asked: how about rose + kankri barging in dave's apartment after the 'gonna give karkat my soul name xoxoxo' text, with daemons!

So Astarte has taken to riding around on Kankri's back, wound right and left like a spill of black scales between his spinal blades, which is not at all awkward for every human who has to witness that. It's not like she can't be fast on the ground, but snakes do better in short bursts; hurrying over long distances is not for them and she's a bit heavy for Rose to carry all the time -- she is a _very big_ snake, she's nowhere near light; it's easier like this.

Anyway so it makes sense that when Rose barges in, Astarte is riding Kankri.

What surprises Dave and Bowie a bit is that the second the door closes on John and Aiolos, Astarte flows off Kankri and strikes straight at Karkat.

Dave startles, forgets to look at his advancing sister, and gets startled again when she catches his arms over the elbows; Bowie flaps her wings, accidentally _almost_ raking Rose's hand with a wingful of white feathers.

"Rose, what the--"

"Shut _up_ ," Rose and Astarte hiss. Their eyes are Terezi's burned-out, accusing red. Dave stares, frozen, guilty bird to her snake.

"Um, I'm fine, if--"

He glances at Karkat and Karkat is sitting on his ass, both arms bound together by a long black coil; Astarte's head is swinging, hood wide open in fury.

"Dude," he says without thinking, a bit bemused that Astarte chose to capture his _demon_ , "if you want to keep me from running you might as well go for Bowie straight on."

Like, it's not as if he would _want_ to leave Karkat behind, either, but Bowie he _couldn't_.

"... Very well," Rose says, and her hand rises toward Dave's daemon.

They're shocked for a second and then they're...

Bowie doesn't fly away, and it's Rose's hand that pauses at the last second, an odd look flickering in her eyes, maybe guilt, maybe rationality returned.

Dave and Bowie both pretend that they'd been bluffing, and that they won.

It kills them, watching Rose cry, hurts badly enough that they think if it could reassure her that they love her and have no intention to die -- that -- for this reason and this reason only, of course...

... Dave has been telling himself that they're just twins and that's all and it means nothing special that all his life he's been wondering what it would feel like to have Rose touch his soul barehanded.

He caresses Karkat's hair and pretends it's his own clawed, armored hand trying to soothe the terrified furor out of his and Bowie's twin.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: MotDP, Terezi and Vriska with Rose and her daemon?

_I can’t believe you’re even thinking about it!_ Terezi says, laughing in that way that still seems breathless even though she’s just disembodied impressions in Rose’s head. 

“Does that mean you’re unwilling to try, then?” Rose returns, pretending her heart isn’t beating in her throat.

 _Are you kidding me!_ Terezi’s presence seems to slither around Rose’s brain; a nonexistent tongue flicks at the inside of her eyelids. _The true question is whether you’ll be able to hold the right mental state long enough…_

 _Oh my god, can you guys stop flirting and just do it!_ Vriska snaps from a little farther away, at the very same time as Astarte raises her blunt triangular head and asks, “Is Terezi getting cold feet after all?”

Rose isn’t too sure who makes the body laugh, her or Terezi. Maybe both. It’s sarcastic to hide excited and she knows everyone here can probably tell.

Well, except for Vriska.

She cups her daemon’s head in her hands and they close their eyes and sink into the peculiar state, the razor’s edge balance that allows them to use each other’s senses. Heat becomes presences, becomes shapes, Rose’s own face in very rough blocks of blood-warmth and cold-nosed points, the taste-scent of her own sweat, her lipstick. She doesn’t talk to her daemon inside her head – not the way she speaks with the demons riding her, not in words – but she knows when Astarte settles into Rose’s own sharp, oddly defined sense of hearing.

It’s not a conversation. A conversation isn’t _necessary._ They’re merely two facets of the same existence, after all, a dislocated but single soul.

She feels Terezi test the way, like an untrustworthy bridge, and then throw herself forward anyway.

When they open their eyes – slow, testing – Astarte’s are a flat, burnt-out red; and she opens her fangy maw in a long, long smile that seems even more at home on Astarte’s face than on Rose’s.

And then Vriska pushes in close and grins back with Rose’s face like she thinks the body’s cheeks will open up sideways if she’s happy enough.

For a second, Rose and Astarte Lalonde achieve double-riding.

_Ow! Get away, get away!_

_You’re the one – oof! No, Vriska no, that’s my –_

_Yeuuuuuwch! That was gross! The grossest! I cant believe I let you guys talk me into this. I don’t care how much you pay, Lalonde, I don’t like Terezi like that!_

_Oh, don’t be a baby, it was nothing like that._

They bicker off into the distance, still shuddering. Rose sighs, and caresses Astarte’s back, and stands, carrying several kilos of giant snake to the kitchen for a tylenol.

“Well, at least nothing exploded.” Like their heads. It was a possibility.

“There’s that.”

(They are not very surprised when later that evening Terezi comes back alone and mentions she might not reject it out of hand if they offer her a ride in Astarte again.)


End file.
